It was a very early morning when we came around the corner and steered into Gastineau channel. This is the approach water & canal towards Juneau. We had to go for a 04.30 approach time as the whole parade of cruise ships was coming behind us and it simply works easier if we dock first and are then out of the way for everybody else. So blazing the trail for the rest of the world we sailed up the channel and parked ourselves at the Alaska Steamship dock at 06.00 hrs. Behind us was the Norwegian Pearl, followed by the Island Princess, followed by the Celebrity Century. By 09.00 hrs. The port was full again, only the anchorage was not in use. Which is nice as it makes our departure a lot easier. When a ship is at anchor it normally sits on the location where you want to swing and then you have to go to the North East corner of the bay and that takes more time.

Time; is something that we do not have very much on this one particular stretch of the trip. Taking the adverse currents into consideration and maybe the need to slow down for fishing boats that hide in the low clouds, I do not have much leeway in getting to Ketchikan on time. A nice quick swing on departure then helps to save a few minutes, minutes that might come in handy somewhere else again.

Juneau turned out to be a good day, later in the day. On arrival the clouds came down from the mountain and as a result we had to cancel a number of sightseeing flights and that does not help with the revenue of the ship. But such is life in Alaska; it is all is very weather dependent. Thus far we have had a very good season, with remarkably good weather. What was more unusual is that we lost a sightseeing trip to the Glaciers of Tracy Arm. We have a tour boat going there for guests who want more ice than the amount that we can offer in Glacier Bay. This tour boat was called back while half way, by the USCG to render assistance to somebody who had run into medical problems while on a remote beach. Of course saving a life takes priority over sightseeing but it cost the guests a nice tour to the sights of Tracy Arm. They all got their tour refunded and a little goody plate was delivered to the cabin from our side to sweeten things up. Not much more that we can do.

My morning was taken up with inspections as usual and a Fire drill. Once a week it is compulsory to conduct a fire drill although we sometimes do more if there is something particular that we want to train on. When we do a drill the most important part, apart from extinguishing the simulated fire, is to review the lessons learned so we can improve. This is a never ending story as crew rotates and you have to keep training to keep everything going as a well-oiled machine. One of the ways that we are doing this is to have an assessor observe the drill. With each drill we have to comply with about 25 benchmarks and on top of that is the review of the assessor. The ships staff takes turns in doing so and I do my share as well. Although in a real emergency my position is on the bridge to maintain oversight and to provide leadership but during routine drills I can leave that to the Staff captain.

Today we had a simulated engine room fire which is in itself is quite difficult to do as we cannot shut down the engine room to create a more real life situation. For that we get training ashore. We cannot expect our guests to sit in the dark for 3 hours, just because we fancied doing an engine room drill. That makes it a little bit harder to visualize for the attack teams what is going on. No darkness, no flames, no billowing clouds and that makes it very important that regardless of the visual stimulation, the standard routines are applied at all times. Ingrain the basics in your routines and it will save lives, if the real thing would occur one day. So the performance of all teams is measured against the company’s Fire Righting Doctrine. When completed there is an elaborate briefing and the learning points are added to our database. The lessons learned are then in corporated in the next drill.

Tomorrow morning at 09.00 hrs. we will start approaching Ketchikan, to be docked by 11.00 hrs. The weather forecast calls for a dry day, and if I interpret the weather charts correctly, it might even be a sunny day.